Corruption PerceptionsIndex 2015

She lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh – one of 114 countries that scores below 50 out of 100 in our 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating serious levels of public sector corruption.

Instead of going to school, she spends her days sorting bottles at a recycling factory. Officially child labour is illegal in Bangladesh. Unofficially a bribe paid to the right official can mean exceptions are made.

Like all exploitation, child labour remains a sad reality in environments where citizens are trapped in poverty and corrupt officials can be paid off.

It’s just one example of the devastation fuelled by corruption. Others include human trafficking, child mortality, poor education standards, environmental destruction and terrorism.

Put simply – public sector corruption is about so much more than missing money. It’s about people’s lives, and it’s a global problem.

Based on expert opinion, the Corruption Perceptions Index measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption worldwide.

The scale of the issue is huge. Sixty-eight per cent of countries worldwide have a serious corruption problem. Half of the G20 are among them.

The 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index clearly shows that corruption remains a blight around the world. But 2015 was also a year when people again took to the streets to protest corruption. People across the globe sent a strong signal to those in power: it is time to tackle grand corruption. José Ugaz, Chair, Transparency International

Which countries improved? Which got worse?

2015 showed that people working together can succeed in fighting corruption. Although corruption is still rife globally, more countries improved their scores in 2015 than declined.

Some countries have improved in recent years – Greece, Senegal and the UK are among those that have seen a significant increase in scores since 2012.

Others, including Australia, Brazil, Libya, Spain and Turkey, have deteriorated.

Dealing with many entrenched corruption issues, Brazil has been rocked by the Petrobras scandal, in which politicians are reported to have taken kickbacks in exchange for awarding public contracts. As the economy crunches, tens of thousands of ordinary Brazilians have lost their jobs already. They didn’t make the decisions that led to the scandal. But they’re the ones living with the consequences.

Many “clean” countries have dodgy records overseas

Northern Europe emerges well in the index – it’s home to four of the top five countries.

But just because a country has a clean public sector at home, doesn’t mean it isn’t linked to corruption elsewhere.

Take Sweden for instance. It comes fourth in the index, yet the Swedish-Finnish firm TeliaSonera – 37 per cent owned by the Swedish state – is facing allegations that it paid millions of dollars in bribes to secure business in Uzbekistan, which comes in at 153rd in the index.

The company is now pulling out of business in Central Asia, but Sweden isn’t the only “clean” country to be linked to dodgy behaviour overseas. As our research shows, half of all OECD countries are violating their international obligations to crack down on bribery by their companies abroad.

Table of results: Corruption Perceptions Index 2015

A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). A country's rank indicates its position relative to the other countries in the index. This year's index includes 168 countries and territories. Click on the column headings to sort the results, or use the search to view the results for one country. Note that N/A means a country was not included in the index during a particular year. To learn more about the results and view the confidence intervals, please see our FAQs and download an XLS or JSON of the results.

Corruption can be beaten if we work together. To stamp out the abuse of power, bribery and shed light on secret deals, citizens must together tell their governments they have had enough. José Ugaz, Chair, Transparency International

Corruption breakdown by region

By looking at the regions, certain trends emerge:

“We’ve witnessed two remarkable trends in the Americas in 2015: the uncovering of grand corruption networks and the mass mobilisation of citizens against corruption,” says Alejandro Salas, Transparency International Director for the Americas. “The Petrobras and La Línea scandals are testament to these trends in the two biggest regional decliners: Brazil and Guatemala. The challenge now is to tackle the underlying causes and reduce impunity for corruption.”

“While a handful of countries in Europe and Central Asia have improved, the general picture across this vast region is one of stagnation,” warns Anne Koch, Director for Europe and Central Asia. “Also very worrying is the marked deterioration in countries like Hungary, FYR of Macedonia, Spain and Turkey where we’re seeing corruption grow, while civil society space and democracy shrink. Corruption won’t be tackled until laws and regulations are put into action and civil society and the media are genuinely free.”

“Once again, 3 of the bottom 10 countries are from the Middle East and North Africa region – Iraq, Libya and Sudan. The ongoing devastating conflicts in these and other countries inevitably mean that any efforts to strengthen institutions and the state have taken a back seat. Yet security will only succeed long-term if governments make a genuine break with cronyism and build trust with citizens,” says Ghada Zughayar, Director for Middle East and North Africa.

“From Ebola to terrorism, we’ve seen corruption exacerbate crises during 2015 in Sub-Saharan Africa,” says Chantal Uwimana, Director for Sub-Saharan Africa. “Forty out of the region’s 46 countries show a serious corruption problem and there’s no improvement for continent powerhouses Nigeria and South Africa. If corruption and impunity are to 'be a thing of the past' as the African Union stated, governments need to take bold steps to ensure rule of law is the reality for everyone.”

The human cost of corruption is huge, yet all too often leaders with notoriously corrupt records continue to enjoy lives of luxury at the expense of people living in grinding poverty. It’s time they faced the consequence of their actions.

“Corruption will stop only when we collectively fight against it,” says photographer AM Ahad of his sad portrait of the nine-year-old child worker in Bangladesh. “It is crucial that we change the common mentality of accepting corruption and treat the crime as the terrible thing that it is.”

Downloads

Correction (1 Feb 2016): The Arabic language Middle East & North Africa infographic was incorrectly titled. We apologise for this error, which has now been rectified.

Data and Methodology Access an Excel spreadsheet of the full results, notes on the methodology and a description of the index's sources.

FAQs Have a question about the index? Here are the answers to the most popular ones in five languages.

Errata

An error in transferring raw data from the Bertelsmann Foundation SGI to the 2015 CPI computation files changed the scores of 11 countries. The incorrect scores affected the published ranks of 31 additional countries/territories by one position.

All scores and ranks have been corrected. All content referring to the countries in question has also been amended.

Breakdown of countries affected by a change in score:

Country

OriginalCPI 2015

CorrectedCPI 2015

New Zealand

88

91

Norway

87

88

Luxembourg

81

85

Netherlands

87

84

Portugal

63

64

Poland

62

63

Malta

56

60

Lithuania

61

59

Latvia

55

56

Korea (South)

56

54

Mexico

35

31

The source description document has also been updated to clarify the underlying questions asked by the CPI sources and how this data is used in the CPI calculations.